


For Your Own Good

by quadrotriticale



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Not Canon Compliant, POV Jonathan Byers, POV Second Person, Shitty Therapists, Suicidal Thoughts, for the record if you need to and you're ready to you should absolutely go see someone, i just have a really complex post-canon world built up for stranger things, i myself have been on meds and they Do Help, will add more tags and characters when relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-05-18 08:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14849732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrotriticale/pseuds/quadrotriticale
Summary: You pick up, lean against the counter. The clock on your wall says it’s 8 pm. You scrub your face with your hands.“Hey, Nancy,” you get out. You know it’s her on the other end of the phone because it’s always her. You’re a little taken aback by how tired you sound.“Hi,” she responds, her voice grounding you through the crackle of the phone line. She asks you if you’ve eaten today and you tell her you don’t know.





	1. Disorder

**Author's Note:**

> hey, this will be my first multi chapter fic. lets see if i can actually fucking finish it.

It’s… actually, you’re not sure what day it is. It’s a weekday, you know that, because something’s nagging at the back of your mind, trying to tell you that you have class today, but you don’t care, don't plan to attend. Your head is too fuzzy and loud, too jumbled for you to really work through the motions of getting yourself out of bed. So, you don't get up, stay buried under blankets that don’t smell like home anymore and trace the water stains on the ceiling of your apartment when you can focus enough. It occurs to you at a time that doesn't matter, that you might be waiting for a phone call. You think you’re overdue to call Nancy, and when you forget, or you avoid it, she calls you instead. (She worries about you. You think that maybe she shouldn’t do that, you don’t think there’s a point. You’ve just about made up your mind and you really, really don’t want to hurt her, or mom, or Will, or any of the friends you’ve made up in New York. It’s a lot easier to just cut them out, you think, but it's hard.)

Your apartment is cold. You don’t bother getting up to turn the heat on, let November seep through the poor insulation of your window and settle into your face, the tips of your toes. You count the snowflakes as they fall outside until you lose count, keep counting them even if you have to start over. You can hear music drift through the wall, muffled and familiar and upbeat as you aren’t, and somewhere in your muddy brain you surmise that it must be Tuesday. He, your neighbour, doesn’t have classes on Tuesdays, otherwise he wouldn’t be there. You contemplate getting up to go see him, debate with yourself the pros and cons of talking to him about what happened last week until your mind drifts to something else and the song has changed six times that you haven’t registered and two that you have. The light from outside is gray, and you fall asleep again. 

You wake up to shifted, muted shadows, apartment colored orange by streetlights, and the phone ringing urgently in your tiny kitchen. When you don’t get up to get it, it rings again ten seconds after it stops, and then again a third time about a minute later. Nancy (it’s always Nancy, Mom calls you on Wednesday evenings if you don’t call her and Will calls you on weekends) tries to reach you four times before you manage to haul yourself out of bed. You stand, bleary eyed in front of the phone until it rings a fifth, don’t quite register it until it’s two chirping rings in. You pick up, lean against the counter. The clock on your wall says it’s 8 pm. You scrub your face with your hands. 

“Hey, Nancy,” you get out, because you know it’s her on the other end of the phone because it’s always her. You’re a little taken aback by how tired you sound. 

“Hi,” she responds, her voice grounding you through the crackle of the phone line. She asks you if you’ve eaten today and you tell her you don’t know. She fusses over you for a bit, badgers you through the phone until you get some food, until you get some water (“I’m drinking it, Nancy, relax”), after which she calms down a little. She asks you about your day, and you tell her sheepishly that you missed classes today. She asks if you’re alright, and it’s Nancy, so you’re honest when you tell her that you’re not. They threatened you with hospitalization again, last Friday. She tells you that you need to stop going to your shrink and you give her your reasons as to why you can’t, and this isn’t the first time you’ve had this conversation. She tells you about what’s going on in Hawkins, tells you how Steve’s doing, says you should really hang out with him over Christmas if you get the chance, and you tell her you’ll try. She talks about your brothers and their friends, discloses to you in a hushed tone that she thinks Mike has a crush on Will and that she’s just waiting for them to start dating or for Mike to go through some horrible rejection phase, and you laugh a little, and her voice gets a bit softer. 

"It's just not the same without you here," she tells you for the thousandth time, sighing a little on the other end of the phone. 

"You always say that," you reply, sliding down the counter to sit on the kitchen floor. It's cold through your pants, but you don't care, just tuck your knees to your chest. "I don't know why you think that though, I was kind of a wallflower, you know, at _best_." 

"Yeah," she starts, and you can hear her shift on the other end of the phone. "But I started to just picture the future with you still here, I guess. Easy to talk to, right? It's not like we can talk to anyone else about what happened, and I don't really trust phones."

"Yeah, you agree, "I'm sorry."

"No, no, no, it's okay, I'm not- no, Jonathan, it's really okay. I mean, I'd totally be nicer if you were home, right, but I'm proud of you for leaving? I'm probably just going to be here for the rest of my life, I'm probably just going to get old and die in the same place I was born and grew up because, I guess, that's just how my life is supposed to go, but you- you know, you chased a dream and you're in New York and you're going to school, and you don't _have_ to come back here if you don't want to." You're quiet, absorbing her words, and when you don't respond, she continues. 

"I miss you, definitely, but you shouldn't be bound to this crappy little town forever just because I want you to be here."

You think you'd rather be at home than be here, even if home is full of shitty memories and trauma and things that remind you of everything you don't want to remember. 

"Thanks, Nancy," you say. She doesn't need to know that you want to kill yourself, and she doesn't need to know that you're hurting yourself again, and she doesn't need to know that you're failing classes. Part of you wants to tell her to stop calling you. Part of you just wants to hang up. You do neither.

You talk with her for a while longer before she says goodbye and tells you to call her next week, tells you to get some rest and go to class tomorrow. You leave your half finished dinner on the counter and crawl back into bed after the call ends and you think you’d cry if you had more energy. You stare at the streak marks on the wall under your window and try to think about anything else. At some point, you guess you actually fall asleep, because you wake up to your alarm blaring and grey light filtering through your window.

You go to class on Wednesday morning, sleep through your lectures and stare at a sheet of paper and the pencil in your hand for an hour and a half in your studio class before your friend, a girl about your age who you met last year, named Laura, taps your arm, making you flinch a little. 

"Sorry-," she starts, shaking her head and drawing her hands into her lap. She smells like stale cigarette smoke and turpentine, she always does. "Sorry, are you okay?" You note the concern on her face, the crease between her eyebrows. Her hair’s tied back today, loose, orange curls framing her face in a way that you think you should find pretty but feel neutral about, though you think she'd be alright to draw.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," you respond slowly, careful to keep your tone neutral, though you think you just come out sounding exhausted. She gives you a skeptical look, starts to pack up her supplies.

"Do you need to leave?" This isn't the first time she's asked you this, and this isn't the first time that you nod in response. "Do you want me to come with you?" You don’t, but Mom calls tonight and you need to be around for that or she’ll worry, so you nod, and she finishes packing up her things, helps you pack up yours, and excuses the both of you, says something to the TA about having to take you to the hospital. You shrug on your coat as you walk out of the room, throw your bag over your shoulder, and dig your hands into your pockets, fingers curling into loose fists. She guides you down and out of the building to the student lots, gets the both of you in her car, and offers you a cigarette. You accept it, roll down the window a little, and let her light it for you. 

You sit in silence for a while. Clouds blot the sun out intermittently, and you watch the changing intensity of the shadows on the wet concrete absently, your mind elsewhere but nowhere in particular. It's barely freezing today, so the snow that fell last night melts into the ground when the sun touches it.

“Are you okay?” she asks after a while, tapping ash out of her window. “And I mean, honestly, no lying to me. I mean- I mean, I know you’re not, but I see you less and less and you’re starting- you’re really starting to worry me, Jonathan.” 

You turn your attention from the shifting shadows to the interior of the car. Smoke hangs in the air like a loose fog, shifting and curling around itself every time one of you moves, leaking from the cracked windows slowly. Sunlight catches on it lazily. You sigh. 

“I think you’re wasting your time,” you tell her, exhaustion on your voice evident even to your own ears. You feel… heavy, you guess. “I’m just… getting worse, and I can’t tell them what’s wrong, I can’t actually tell anyone what’s wrong with me. You know, I tried? I tried to talk to them and I tried to get help when I started getting really bad, last year, I really, really tried, and it was great for a while, I was doing alright, I told them about my dad, and every shitty thing that happened to me growing up and they helped, really, really helped, but I-” you cut yourself off, take a deep breath, shut your mouth. The air tastes like tobacco. Her eyebrows are creased again, and her eyes, brown and open and understanding, read too much like pity to you, so you look away. 

“...but?” she says, after you’re quiet for a little too long. She offers you another smoke and you take it, light it, take a drag. You shouldn’t be talking about this, they could hear you- you don't know how, but they could. They have ears fucking everywhere, you're sure.

“I made the mistake of thinking I could talk to them about something that happened back home, before I came out here,” you say slowly, watching your words so as not to give away too much. “They keep trying to tell me it didn’t happen, and I’m making it up to cope, but everyone at home who went through the same fucking thing, remembers what I do- and they keep- they keep threatening me, and I can’t- I can’t fucking do this anymore, okay? It’s been one thing after another since- since forever, pretty much, and I’m so _fucking_ tired, Laura.” Your eyes burn, from smoke and tears and the muted anger in your gut, so you take another drag and turn your attention out the window. 

“I’m trying so hard, I’ve been trying so hard not to give up, but I don’t think I can do this anymore.” You dig your nails into your free hand, and you’re both quiet for a long time. The sun disappears behind the clouds before anyone talks again, and you catch miniature snowflakes out the window, glinting in the muted daylight. 

"...Do you want me to stay over tonight?" she asks you eventually, her voice gentle. You nod.

"That's... yeah, that's probably a good idea. I don't think I should be alone right now." She nods, puts her key in the ignition, and drives the both of you back to your apartment. You lean your head on the window and watch the city streets until she pulls into your building's lot. You're going to need to get your car from school, sometime. Whatever. 

You bring her upstairs and she trails quietly behind you, slips into your apartment and tosses her bag down by your couch.

"Sorry for the mess," you tell her, shutting and locking the door behind you. 

"It's alright," she says, wandering into your kitchen. "I get it, my place isn't much better lately. You mind if I order pizza? I'll pay, don't worry."

You nod, half collapse on the couch. You listen to her place the order, curl up with her when she comes back and sets herself down next to you on the couch. 

The pizza comes eventually, a little slower than you think it should come, but it's still warm when you get it so you don't complain. You eat, watch TV, smoke, talk about nothing in particular. Eventually, you doze, and she doesn't bother to disturb you. 

The phone rings at 9:30 pm, wakes you with a start, and you fall over yourself and the empty pizza box on the floor trying to get to it before it stops ringing. You catch it on the sixth ring, put it to your ear, Laura looking at you inquisitively from the couch room before you say “Hi, Mom,” into the receiver. 

You don’t talk for long. Your mother asks how you’re doing, and you tell her that you’re fine, she asks how school is, and you tell her that it’s fine. She asks you when you’re coming home for Christmas, and you tell her that you’ll come home after your exams are over, and you’ll stay until January, and you ask her how Will is, and she tells you she thinks he’s doing alright, and that he’ll call you on Sunday after he gets home, and you decide that’s something you need to be around for, another little thing to look forward to, but you don’t tell her that. You tell her you have a friend over, bid her a gentle ‘good night, love you mom’, and hang up after she responds. Laura welcomes you back to the couch. You set your head on her shoulder and sigh. 

“She calls me every Wednesday,” you tell Laura, pulling the blanket you’re sharing back over yourself. “I used to call her, you know, so she didn’t run up long distance charges because she doesn’t have money for that, but I sort of…” you gesture vaguely. She seems to understand. 

“Yeah, no, I get it,” she responds, leaning her head on yours. “I can’t really get out of bed or call anyone or do anything when I get bad either.”

You spend the rest of the night watching TV and talking quietly, and you fall asleep with her on the couch. She doesn’t make you go to school in the morning. You consider dropping out. 

Days go by slowly, indiscriminately, passing into the next without you really noticing. Sometimes you go to school, a little more than just enough to write your exams, show up to work on time when you remember and late when you forget and someone has to call you, spend most of the rest of your time asleep or staring at the wall, or, if you’re lucky, curled up with Laura. You miss an appointment, and then another, and it’s mid December now, and you’re supposed to drive home soon, and your therapist has called you twice in the last hour because it’s Friday and you’re supposed to have an appointment today, but you’re not going. It’s snowing outside, and you’re packing some things in a suitcase and trying to get out of the house because surely, surely getting away from New York will get rid of the anxiety that’s starting to well up in your throat. 

You grab your suitcase and your keys, make sure the stove is off, check it once again before you head out the door just in case. Your door locked, you hurry down the hall, down the stairs, to your car. Every foot step in the hallway startles you, because you’ve missed three appointments now and they keep threatening to take you away, and they know where you live so they could if they wanted to, they said they would, but you make it to your car and out of the lot and out of New York without any incident. Snow gathers on your windshield, and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as you turn the windshield wipers on. You ‘forgot’ your medication in your apartment, and you consider just… not coming back. Maybe it would be better to just stay in Hawkins. 

You pop open the dashboard compartment, rifle through it until you get all your cassettes on the passenger seat of your car, and try to pay enough attention to the road that you don’t crash while you pick the one you want to listen to. It’s an almost twelve hour drive in good weather and this isn’t that, and you’re only stopping for gas. You pop in the cassette you’ve labeled in big block letters as “THE CLASH”, and settle into your seat. The electric guitar, familiar and friendly and sounding of home filters through your car’s stereo, and you turn it up. Fingers tapping on the steering wheel, you drive home. Sooner than you expect, almost despite yourself, you're singing along at the top of your lungs.


	2. The Headmaster Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You sleep better than you have in months, but you still wake up tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long ive been depressed. also, works been A BITCH for a whole month and i havent had the time or the motivation to do any writing. i have literally written nothing in a month and it was really starting to bother me.

If there’s one thing you can count on, if there’s one constant in your life, it’s Hawkins, Indiana. New York is constantly changing, the city itself feels like it’s alive, but Hawkins has had the same shops and the same buildings and the same everything for as long as you can remember. It’s small, it’s a rinky-dink little town in the middle of nowhere, and you feel more at home here than you do anywhere else. Even though the town itself is soaked in trauma, even though the air still feels like it’s full of something no one is ever going to get over, you belong here. You always have and you always will. You think, maybe, the town itself understands what you're going through, speaks to you through the cracks in the pavement and the peeling paint and tells you that it _knows_ why you hurt, and it's sorry. The skies are black and starless as you drive through town, snow obscures your view, comes down faster, stickier than your windshield wipers can clear it, but you could navigate these roads in your sleep. You half-sing along to the song that drifts through your speakers, one of your favorites by the Smiths, and head towards home. 

_(I want to go home, I don’t want to stay, give up life as a bad mistake.)_

You see the lights first, little pinpricks of color through the snowfall. You guess Mom found time to put up the Christmas lights this year. Calm settles in your stomach, you feel some of the weight lift off your shoulders. You can see people moving, silhouetted in the window- the taller one runs out of view before you’ve even stopped and parked your car, and the front door busts open as you’re getting out, and Will- taller than you now, damn- nearly bowls you over. He’s in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms and winter boots, and he’s hugging you, and you’re grinning. He’s sixteen, and you haven’t seen him since August. You see your mom standing in the doorway, blanket wrapped around her shoulder, and you give her a wave as soon as your brother lets you go.

“You’re early,” Will tells you. He follows you around to the trunk of your car, has apparently volunteered himself to help you get your bags inside. “Mom said you weren’t coming back ‘till Sunday.”

“Thought it would be a nice surprise if I came home early,” you explain, handing him one of your bags, hauling the other one out of the trunk for yourself and shutting it. 

“Yeah, we missed you,” he informs you, trailing you as you begin to walk inside, "it's a pretty nice surprise."

“Missed you too.”

When you get to the door, you set your bag down, give your mother a tight hug. She says that it’s good to see you, and she missed you, and she’s glad you made it home safe, and you tell her you missed her too. You kick your shoes off, Will helps you drag your stuff to your room, and you find your mom fussing when you and your brother make your way back into the living room. 

“I was expecting you Sunday, um, there isn’t a lot of food in the house right now, we already ate dinner- did you eat?” she frets, and you didn’t, but she doesn’t need to know that. 

“Yeah, I did. Mom, we can go get some food tomorrow, yeah?” She nods, seems to relax a little. The wall clock reads just after 9 pm and you think that’s still early enough to suggest a movie, and your brother pipes up with ‘Star Wars?’ and one thing leads to another, and you’re tucked up on the couch under a blanket, sandwiched between your mother and your brother, watching Return of the Jedi on your shitty living room television. Will falls asleep halfway through the movie, and you don’t wake him until it’s over. Your mother tells you quietly that she thinks he hasn’t been sleeping, again. Maybe he’ll get some rest while you’re here.

You wake him gently when the movie ends, and he mumbles something you don’t quite catch, tries to bury his face in your shoulder, tries to go back to sleep. Your mom gets up to pop the tape out of the VCR, and you, eventually, get Will up and shuffling in the direction of his room. You bid him good night, and he waves over his shoulder.

Your mother slips the tape back into its case, puts it back with the rest of them. The wall clock reads 11:34. 

“Are you going to bed yet?” she asks, wandering back over to the couch and sitting beside you. She looks tired, more than you’re used to her looking but less than she did a few years ago, and you wonder why. “I know it’s a long drive, I’m sure you could use some sleep.” You could, but you shake your head. You’re home, you want to savour it for a little. 

“Not yet,” you tell her, “why?”

“I just…” she looks at her hands, and then looks at you, and you can see the worry in her eyes, “is something wrong?”

You start to panic, a bit, but try to keep it out of your face. You love your mother, you do, but she’s been through enough with you and your brother, you don’t want her to have to worry about you anymore than she already does.

“No,” you respond, perhaps a bit too quickly, “why’d you ask?”

“I don’t know? You… I don’t know, you’ve seemed off lately, on the phone, I’m just worried. You know you can talk to me, right?” 

You can’t. You want to- you want to tell her everything, you want to tell your mother everything that’s been happening to you because it’s your mom, you trust her, you love her, it's your _mom_ and there's still a part of you that's six years old and thinks she can fix everything, but you can’t tell her, and the rest of you, the part that's spend your life watching her struggle and suffer and hurt like every other person on Earth, knows she couldn't fix it even if she tried. She shouldn’t have to worry about you, though. No one should have to worry about you. You nod anyway. “I know, Mom,” you lie, “I’m alright, I promise.” You pretend you don’t have new scars on your thighs. 

She doesn’t seem convinced, and you’re sure she’s not, but she relents anyway. “I’m just worried, honey.”

For a while longer, you sit with her, force your anxiety to ebb because it’s your mother, talk occasionally, watch TV quietly until it’s just after midnight and she bids you goodnight, tells you she loves you. You turn the TV off a few minutes after she leaves and make your own way to bed. Your room is just how you left it, and your blankets smell like home, and you’re asleep before you really realize it. You dream, but it's nothing remarkable, nothing you really remember.

You sleep better than you have in months, but you still wake up tired. It’s 7:00 Saturday morning, and your brother’s still asleep, your mother too as far as you know, and you’ve dug a few eggs, some bread, the last few strips of bacon and a little bit of butter out of the fridge. It’s about all there is in there, besides some sauces, a half empty jar of pickles, and a quarter of a carton of orange juice. It’s enough for breakfast for three if you ration it carefully, something you're more used to doing than you maybe should be. You find coffee grounds and a filter in a nearly bare cupboard and put it on, go about making breakfast. You feel alright, lighter than you’re used to. 

Will shuffles in a little bit after you’ve started cooking. You greet him, and he stares at you for a second before apparently remembering that you’re home for the holidays. He waves, sets himself down at the table, doesn’t really talk. You don’t think he’s actually awake, but you give him a plate when breakfast is ready, offer him coffee which he accepts wordlessly. You set aside a plate and a mug for your mother, and bring your own food to the table. 

Mom sleeps in, and you don’t bother to wake her, so when Will says he’s going to Mike’s and you decide that that’s as good an excuse to get out and see Nancy as any, you offer to drive him and scribble a note to your mother to leave by her food when he accepts. It’s quarter past 8 when you get out to your car, and the drive is quiet. You drop him off, tell him to call Nancy’s if he wants a ride home later, and drive off. 

Nancy lives across town, in a tiny little house you know she’s only half paying for right now. You’ve only been there a few times, she only moved out in July. You park in her driveway, go up to the door, and ring the bell. She opens the inside door about half a minute later, pauses for a second, lights up, and opens the screen door to let you in. She looks a little more tired than you remember her being, bags under her eyes accentuated by the fact that you’re pretty sure she's not wearing any makeup today, or at least, not this early in the morning. Her hair falls loosely over her shoulders, part way down a grey-ish knit sweater that you think is new, sweat pants under that that you know used to belong to Steve Harrington.

“You said you were coming back tomorrow,” she tells you as you toe off your shoes. 

“Yeah, I did, but I skipped another session,” you respond, more truthful with her than you'll ever be with your mother. You shove your hands into your pockets as she shuts the door. Her house is warm, but you don’t want to take off your jacket. “That’s three in a row now, and they’ve got it in my head they’re gonna show up at my door and drag me away if I miss too many or stop taking my meds, and I did all of that, so I… I guess, ran away.” You shrug, and she looks concerned, but ushers you further inside anyway. 

"Well, I'm glad you stopped taking your meds. I don't know what they were giving you, but it was messing you up pretty bad," she replies, frowning. "I mean, the new stuff was." You nod in agreement.

Her house is nice, but nothing fancy, small and clean with just enough decoration so as not to appear Spartan. Her couch is small- a hand me down you recognize from her parents basement, coarse, yellowed fabric she’s covered in a soft blanket, sitting in front of a wood and glass coffee table. You catch coffee rings on the glass, half hidden by a dog-eared Stephen King paperback as she leads you into the kitchen, recognize her television pressed against the wall across from the couch as something from her parent’s basement too. The kitchen is small, and she’s left a few too many dishes in the sink, a few too many on the drying rack too. She picks two mugs up from the rack, checks the insides of them, and asks you if you want coffee, because she’d made some earlier, made a little too much by accident. You don’t, but you accept anyway. You take a seat at her tiny little table, she busys herself with drinks. (“Cream?” “Oh wait, sorry, I’m out, milk?” “Sugar?”) She hands you a mug when she’s done, and takes the seat across the table from you. Steam rises from the cup, a twisting, twirling fog that you distract yourself with studying. Nancy keeps her hands wrapped around her mug, and doesn’t speak for a beat longer than you think is comfortable. 

“So,” she starts slowly, and you can feel her eyes on your face. “...How’ve you been? And I mean, honestly, no bullshit.” 

“No bullshit,” you repeat, sigh, take a sip of your drink. It’s too bitter and too sweet all at once, a little bit too hot, but you fight not to make a face. “...I don’t think I should go back to New York.” 

“...You don’t have to,” she tells you, “I mean, I know Hawkins isn’t great, but there’s a ton of other places you could go if you still don’t want to stay here. This is a big country, you could go anywhere.” 

You nod. You don’t think she gets it. “I mean… I almost,” you pause briefly, swirl the contents of your cup a little. “I almost didn’t make it back this year, Nance, if I go back, I don’t think I’ll be here next year.” Your voice is quiet and you know it, maybe a little too quiet, but she seems to hear it anyway. The kitchen falls near silent, and your ears focus on the ticking of the wall clock and the electric hum of the refrigerator, the quiet huff of your own breath an uneven accompaniment. 

“What _happened_ ,” she asks, quiet, fearful, pity and everything you don’t want to hear tucked away in the creases of her voice, in the furrow of her brow. “You were doing so much better for a while, Jonathan, what happened out there?” 

“I tried to talk about- about, you know,” you make a vague gesture with your hands to avoid saying what you mean. You’re conscious of how quiet you’re speaking, how quiet you feel you need to be speaking, “doctor-patient confidentiality or whatever, I guess, but they- they’ve got their- their- their everything, I guess, everywhere. And I know, I know, we’re not supposed to- not supposed to talk about it, but it’s-” you cut yourself off, sigh. 

“I know,” she responds, voice hushed. Maybe she has the same instinct, or maybe she’s just mimicking you. “I get it, I still have nightmares, I keep worrying that it’s going to happen again, and someone else is gonna die or someone else’s little brother is gonna get stuck or- all of that, right? It keeps me up, and it’s- it’s that time of year, again. I don’t blame you for trying to get help with it. Your family kept getting the most and I mean… you all already had so much else to deal with.” 

“I swear, it’s gonna kill me, Nance,” you tell her, your own voice sounding exhausted and far away to your ears. You watch the coffee swirling in your cup, and she worries her lip across the table from you. 

“...It might,” she responds eventually, “it might kill all of us. But… you’re here now, right?” You nod. She gets up from her seat and you look up, follow her with your eyes as she rounds the table, offers a smile that relaxes your shoulders a little bit. “Let’s watch a movie or something. I got a new VCR last week, I’ve been meaning to test it out.”

“Sounds nice,” you respond, give her a tired smile of your own and follow her into her living room, mug conveniently forgotten on the table. You take a seat on her couch and she goes to a little shelf you didn’t notice before, hidden beside the TV stand. She crouches, studies the shelf’s contents for a minute before picking out a VHS copy of Gremlins. She holds the box up, gives you a quizzical look, to which you respond with a nod. She fiddles with the TV and her VCR for a few minutes before exclaiming “Hah! Gotcha,” and moving to sit beside you on the couch as the movie starts up. 

As the previews roll, Nancy yanks the blanket from the back of the couch, throws her legs over your lap, and then throws the blanket over the both of you, though she gets it all the way up to her chin, and you’re left picking at the fabric over her shins. 

Nancy chatters during the previews, talks about anything she can think to talk about to fill the silence. You contribute little, but you enjoy listening anyway, her voice soothing you more than you’d probably ever tell her. The movie starts, and she falls relatively silent. You watch, you guess, but you spend most of the run-time thinking. Still, it’s nice to have her there, it’s nice that she’s still comfortable around you. You think, were it a couple years ago, you might have found Gremlins scary, but it doesn’t bother you so much now. 

You spend most of the day at Nancy’s. You chat, watch movies, take a nap on her couch, eat cold leftovers from her fridge instead of cooking or ordering out because you’re too tired to bother and she admits to you that she doesn’t have the energy either. The day is good, if uneventful, and you find yourself forgetting about everything from time to time, you’re almost okay.

It’s late evening, and you’re picking apart a piece of cold chicken in a Tupperware container, legs crossed on the couch with Nancy beside you when you notice that it’s dark outside. The lights are on in her home, it’s lit by incandescent bulbs and the changing colors of the TV screen, but you catch a moonless sky and the dull glow of street lights out the window and try not to feel uncomfortable. It’s snowing, but you try to ignore it. 

The phone doesn’t ring while you’re there, and it’s the middle of the night before you bid her farewell and shuffle through the fresh powder on her doorstep to get to your car. Your drive home is silent, just the sound of the engine and your own jumbled thoughts, the swish of your wipers and the crunch of the snow beneath your tired. You’re lucky Hawkins is a sleepy town, you think, pulling down the last road on the way to your childhood home. If it wasn’t, if the streets were just a little bit busier than they are, you might have crashed with how distracted you were. The lights are off when you get home, but you didn’t expect anyone to be awake. You think, today was a good day. 

It’s still snowing when you pull up in front of the house, and it’s still snowing five minutes later when you work up the energy to turn off your car and shuffle up to the front door, fumble with your keys, fumble with the lock. Your mother is sleeping, you’re sure, Will is sleeping too if he isn’t staying at Mike’s, so you try to keep it down as you toe of your boots and start to tiptoe through the house. 

You’re going past the kitchen when the phone rings. 

Your blood runs cold, though you’re not sure why. If you could hear anything other than the trill of the house phone, you’d hear a groan from your mother’s room, creaking in the floorboards as she gets up. 

Hesitantly, terrified for a reason you don’t quite understand, you move towards the phone, take it off the hook, put the receiver to your ear. 

“...Hello?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title named for a song by the smiths (the headmaster ritual) exactly one lyric of which is included in this chapter. jonathan listens to shitty emo music from the 70s thanks for coming to my ted talk.


	3. Interzone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You could have sworn you locked your door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writers block is a whole bitch

“Jonathan?” says the voice on the other end of the phone. It’s a soft voice, a tired one, familiar and feminine and one you recognize as soon as you hear it. The tension drains out of your shoulders, and you lean heavily against the wall, let out a sigh. 

“God, Laura, you scared me,” you tell her, voice hushed so as not to wake your mother. 

“Sorry,” she says, sounding sheepish over the crackle of the phone line. “You just kind of vanished, I was worried. You've been so jumpy the last little while, I don’t know- I mean, maybe you'd gotten hurt, or something, or... Or, you know. I was just worried.” 

“I’m alright,” you assure her, shake your head before continuing. “That’s not important though, it’s- it’s past midnight, did you have to call now?” 

“Um-” a pause. Over the phone, you hear a siren in the background and wonder where it's headed. “No, I guess not. I just- I came over to see if you were okay, because you weren’t answering your phone and you didn’t tell me you were going anywhere and I've been trying since yesterday to check on you, and- and I came over and your door was unlocked, which was weird- and your things w-”

“My door- sorry- my door was unlocked?” 

“Yeah, I thought that was weird, so I went in to check, and your things were gone and it looked like you hadn’t been here a couple days, so I called there to see if anyone knew anything,” she continues, slowly, a touch of concern in her voice, “but you’re there and you’re fine, so that’s good.” 

You could have sworn you locked your door. “I guess I forgot to lock the door,” you reply, uneasy. “Is anything missing?” 

“Uh- um, hard to say, since you’ve probably got your tapes and your clothes and stuff,” she laughs a little. 

“Fair enough.” You comb through the memory of your hasty exit as precisely as you can. You’re so sure you locked that door, you always lock it, you always double check.

“...You mind if I crash here tonight? You’ve actually got some food in your fridge and I don't have any in mine, and I’m kinda hungry, and I think it would really be a shame for all this to go to waste.”

“Sure, yeah,” you agree. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back, uh, if you wanna crash there while I’m gone, that’s fine.”

“Cool,” she says, “glad you’re okay though. Scared me, you know, maybe let someone know next time you decide to skip town?” 

You laugh a little, try to ease your nerves enough to sound normal over the phone. “Yeah, sure. Talk to you later?”

“Talk to you later. ‘Night.”

“‘Night.” You locked that _fucking door_ , you know it. 

She hangs up after that, and so do you after a moment of silence. As quiet as you possibly can, trying to avoid the creaks in the floorboards, you tiptoe to your room. You miss a few, though, stop to cringe as a particularly unpleasant, ear-piercingly loud in the near silence, noise meets your ears. You’re mental map the floor’s creak-zones needs refreshing, you guess, you’ve been away from home too long. 

You sleep fitfully, uncomfortably, can’t stop yourself from trying to reply your hurried departure from New York in your mind, pick apart every minute detail to determine for sure whether or not you locked the door. Maybe you did just leave it unlocked? Maybe you’re just worrying for nothing. Maybe- maybe it’s nothing, maybe everything you’ve been dealing with is just catching up with you, and you’re worrying about some inconsequential detail of your day instead of dealing with the larger issues that you have. You try to tell yourself that you’re just being paranoid, just letting your anxiety blow it out of the water. Still, you brain doesn’t let you sleep. You give up trying a few hours in and creep back out of your room. You navigate the hall and then the kitchen in the dark, dig through the drawer you know your mother keeps her cigarettes in, snag one, feel around in the drawer for a match to light it with. You take a drag in the kitchen, a slow, deep breath, before moving to the living room. You plop yourself down on the couch, flick on the lamp on the table beside you, and watch the curl of smoke from the cigarette in your hand, from your exhales. You have too much on your mind, and you’re exhausted. 

You realize belatedly that you forgot to get groceries yesterday. Hadn’t you told your mother you were going to? Maybe she went herself. You tap your cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table, and then again, and again, and again until it’s gone, and you’re left sitting there in the lamp-light with nothing but your thoughts and your own exhaustion. You drag the blanket off the back of the couch, and maybe, maybe, you fall asleep. Your brain doesn’t register it, if you do. 

The wall clock reads half-past-five when your mother shuffles out of her room, old housecoat and matted slippers, looking like she hasn’t slept much better than you do. It feels to you like you’ve just sat down, but you’re sure you’ve been out here at least two and a half hours. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, and you can hear how tired she is. You want to tell her to go back to sleep. 

‘Yes,’ you want to say, want to tell her you’re okay so she doesn’t worry, doesn’t stress about you. She has enough to worry about, you think, she has enough to deal with. 

“No,” you say instead, word tumbling from your mouth by accident. She bee-lines it for the couch, sets down beside you, and you don’t really mean for it to happen, don’t really mean to accept the gesture, but she draws you against her side, and you bury your face in her shoulder. 

Your mother is a petite woman, small and wiry and perhaps, to people who don’t know her, delicate, frail looking, even. She’s strong, though, and you feel that when she holds you, arms looped tight around your body in a way you can only describe as protective. She kisses the top of your head, runs a hand through your hair. 

“What’s wrong?” Her voice is gentle, soft, lost all the edges of exhaustion from earlier. 

You’re quiet for a long time. She doesn’t push, doesn’t press you for information, just rubs your back as your breathing falters. 

“I think I’m just- I’m gonna drop out, Mom, I’m just gonna come home.” 

She continues to rub your back, hold you close to her side. “Did something happen, honey? I thought you liked it there?”

“I mean- I do, I do, it’s just- yeah, something happened, and I’m not-” you pause, take a slow breath, “Mom, I’m not- I’m gonna die, if I stay there, it’s gonna kill me. Please, please, don’t ask me why.” 

She doesn’t respond, really, but you can tell that worried her. Her shoulders tense a little, and she really just holds you, for a while. You rest against her side. 

All at once, your exhaustion catches up with you, and you drift off on the couch, resting against your mother.

**Author's Note:**

> all the titles for chapters are song titles that don't necessarily have anything to do with the chapter so;  
> ch 1: disorder by joy divison  
>  _I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand,_  
>  _Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?_  
>  ch 2: headmaster ritural by the smiths  
>  _I want to go home_  
>  _I don't want to stay_  
>  ch 3: interzone by joy division  
>  _And I was looking for some friends of mine._  
>  _And I had no time to waste._


End file.
